Night Side of the River

As the night steadies around me and my body relaxes, I open my eyes. What’s that? What can I hear? Why do we open our eyes when we hear something in the dark? We can’t see it.

Ghosts prefer the past. That’s when they were alive.

There is nothing in the Bible about Limbo, but its usefulness was just too good to give up, until 2007, when it was officially closed down. The children who lived there were rehomed in Heaven, by Papal decree, and I am not sure what happened to the other evacuated residents. The Catholic Church has always owned a lot of property. I guess your landl

I like city noises when I am high up above them. It sounds as though it’s the sea, far away, and I am safe, because it’s nothing to do with me; it’s the way you feel safe as a child, when the grown-ups’ noises downstairs become the soundtrack of sleep.

I like looking back into rooms filled with people. I like the silent-movie feel of it. I used to do it when I was a girl, watching my parents and sisters, knowing they couldn’t see me. Now, in the crisp, starry air, I looked in and saw my party, my friends, laughing, animated. I smiled to myself. This is what it means to have friends; this ease, th

As I walk back home, another store on the street is closing down. EVERYTHING MUST GO. That’s fine by me. Take it all away. The cars, the people, the goods for sale. Strip it back to the dirt under my feet and the sky over my head. Turn off the soundtrack. Blank the picture.

People who didn’t live as long as we do – people who were often dead in their fifties – understood both distance and apartness in a way that we don’t. All travel is time travel. So, I try to think of this absence from you as a long separation. I must take care of the house and garden, and I am trying my best. You liked things neat and elegant. Taki

Humans can see less than 1 per cent of the electromagnetic spectrum. We call this visible light. We can’t see radio waves, gamma rays, X-rays, ultraviolet light. We manage just fine; our mistake is to rename visible light – what we can see – as reality.

What did Albert Camus say? It’s not one thing or the other that leads to madness; it’s the space in between them. I’m living in a space between lives – my past and my future. I’m living in a space between worlds. How could I not feel like a crazy woman?